The Plumber vs. The Messiah

Oct 15, 2008

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, remember the plumber that Barack Obama ran into Sunday in Toledo? He was campaigning door-to-door, and he ran into a local plumber, Joe Wurzelbacher, and Wurzelbacher said this to Obama. He said, ‘Your new tax plan’s going to tax me more, isn’t it?’

OBAMA: It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance at success, too. I think when we spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.

RUSH: And there it would have ended and in fact we may never have heard of this if left to the mainstream media. If left to the Drive-By Media, we probably would not know that this exchange had happened. However, with the advent of New Media and so forth, Neil Cavuto over at Fox got the plumber on his program yesterday afternoon. The plumber again from Toledo, Joe Wurzelbacher, and Cavuto said, ‘Joe, did Obama win you over?’

WURZELBACHER: No, the answer actually scared me even more.

CAVUTO: How so?

WURZELBACHER: He said he wants to distribute wealth, and I mean that’s kind of a socialist viewpoint. It’s not the government to decide that I make a little too much and so I need to share it with other people. That’s not the American dream.

RUSH: Now, this guy’s a plumber. Could we assume that when most people, particularly political scientists and pollsters, think of plumbers, they think of blue-collar? And they think of blue-collar as automatic Democrat. They think union, blue-collar, automatic Democrat because Democrats are for the working guy, which has always been a myth, but that’s the image, Democrats for the working guy. So here is Joe Wurzelbacher, ‘He wants to distribute wealth. That’s kind of a socialist viewpoint. It’s not the government to decide that I make a little too much so I need to share it with people.’ That is exactly the way to describe Obama: Robin Hood, redistributing wealth. We’re going to take and we’re going to redistribute, and we’re going to decide when you have enough. Remember, the American dream ends at $250,000 with Barack Obama in the Oval Office, because once you get to $250,000, that’s when your tax rates going up to the point that it’s going to be very hard for your income to rise. You’re not going to be able to save as much ’cause Obama’s going to take it from you.

Now, this Robin Hood business, we gotta be careful that we do not malign and impugn Robin Hood. Robin Hood took from the state. Robin Hood went back and took from the sheriff of Nottingham, remember? Robin Hood was trying to take what the state had already stolen and give it back to the people of Sherwood Forest. To say that Robin Hood is the equivalent of Obama is to malign and impugn Robin Hood. I remember watching Robin Hood when I was growing up and I remember the sheriff of Nottingham was as evil as that guy on Lost in Space. Might have been the same guy, for all I know. We have more. Cavuto says, ‘You didn’t seem remotely intimidated or prone to back down. Normally when somebody, even in the media, meets the candidate, whether they agree or disagree, they’re just sort of starstruck. You didn’t seem any of that. What’s the deal?’

WURZELBACHER: I honestly didn’t feel any kind of sense of presence with him. I mean he was just another guy peddling his viewpoint, is how I looked at it. I mean — so, no, I didn’t get that starstruck feeling or anything like that, which I was kind of disappointed in. I kind of expected it. I figured I’d, you know, tumble over my tongue a couple times, but it didn’t happen.

RUSH: Cavuto then said, ‘Well, you know, you’re the type of guy who the tax increases could affect, where the cutoff is, and you don’t fit this gazillionaire model, Joe, you’re a plumber. In other words, you’re not the Henry Kravitz types. You’re in that group that would see your taxes increase. What do you think of that?’

WURZELBACHER: I live in a simple middle class home. Most of the homes go from anywhere from $90,000 at the lowest to maybe $140 at the highest. You know, just working. And, you know, when I do purchase the rest of this company and move forward, I’ll be living there still because I don’t want to keep up with the Joneses, and two, I couldn’t really afford a bigger house. I’m going to have to work hard to make that company go, you know, I want to put more trucks on the road, and his tax increase kind of hurts that aspect.

RUSH: And Cavuto then said, ‘Well, some people interpreted his remark as sort of Robin Hood-ish, that it was a redistribution of wealth, taking from guys like you to help people who are not as well off as you. What do you think of that?’

WURZELBACHER: Robin Hood stole from greedy rich people and redistributed it to, you know, the peasant, so to speak, so if he’s calling us peasants, I kind of resent that. I’m the same class of people that, you know, I went from paycheck to paycheck living to finally being able to save some money, and it’s just work and hard work. That’s the American dream to me. You work hard, you’re going to get what you want eventually. It’s not going to happen overnight by no means, but you work hard enough, you’ll get it. And I just resent the government or Barack Obama’s plan to take more away from me.

RUSH: That’s Joe the plumber, Joe Wurzelbacher in Toledo, Ohio, who confronted Obama. Obama said, ‘Well, I just think we need to spread the wealth around.’ Spread it around. And this is a guy, as I say, who most people would consider to be blue collar, an automatic Obama supporter. But he wants no part, you hear this guy? He wants to expand the plumbing business he has, he wants to buy more trucks, he wants to hire people, and he just said he won’t be able to do it! He won’t be able to hire more people if Obama is elected. Trust me, there are more small business out there, people like this out there than you will ever know cause the Drive-Bys are not going to focus on them. In a just media world, if there was a media that was truly just and objective — forget objective — if they were just curious, my gosh, folks, if they were just curious, here’s a guy they think to be an automatic Obama supporter, and he’s not, and they’re not even curious about why? What they want to do is cover him up.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Wes in Bend, Oregon. Great to have you here, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hi. Small business dittos from the Left Coast, Rush.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: The reason I’m calling is I have a small business in central Oregon, and I work with a lot of other small businesses here, and I’m really surprised to find out, like me, how many of us actually have preemptive plans for cutbacks and layoffs the minute Obama gets elected.

RUSH: Really? The minute he gets elected? You’re not even going to wait for the implementation of his policies?

CALLER: Well, we see what’s coming down the pike. You know, what he’s announced for his new tax plans, in addition to the, you know, the crushing burden of just what he wants to lay on the employers for his health care program. We’ve gotta build up some reserves in order to basically soften the blow that’s probably going to hit us next year.

RUSH: Wes, hang on just a second, because I want to ask you about something. Part of Obama’s stated and revised economic plan is to give businesses, like yours, a $3,000 tax credit for every full-time employee you hire. Why is that not attractive to you?

CALLER: There’s no way a $3,000 tax credit is going to offset the cost of a $50,000 employee. It’s just insane.

RUSH: How much does it cost you to pay an employee $50,000?

CALLER: Well, if their income is 50 — and to be quite honest, with my people, most of them are making between 35 and 40 — with the cost of the health care and the split, we’re probably adding another 12,000 to 14,000 per over the course of a year.

RUSH: All right, so if you pay somebody 40 grand a year and that’s their gross, it’s costing you around 50 to $54,000 to actually hire them?

CALLER: Right, because we have to offset the cost of the health care we pay — and, of course, then there’s matching for the Social Security and such like that.

RUSH: Yeah. Exactly. Well, but actually the employee is paying all of that. They just slough some of it off on you, but the cost to you, to hire the employee, is the matching you have to pay. So the employee is getting it. He just never sees it, and the employee is being told that you’re nice guys and you’re matching it. Okay, so you got a $40,000 employee, you cost 50 to 54 grand to hire the guy. So Obama’s plan to give you a $3,000 tax credit to hire a new full timer just doesn’t work out financially?

CALLER: It’s insane. Unless you’re going to be a part-timer at McDonald’s maybe it makes sense, but for me it’s just not even close.

RUSH: Now, here’s what Obama wants, and I’m not… Don’t change. I’m not running your business. I’m not trying to tell you how to do this. I just want you to know even more than you may think you know about Obama. He knows full well that a $3,000 tax credit to hire a new full timer is something you’ll reject. Obama and the Democrats want to be able to point the finger at you, Wes, and all of your small business colleagues for being mean-spirited to employees and so forth and not hiring people in these economic times. Look out.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Trisha in Trumbull, Connecticut, you’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Rush, thank you for the opportunity to talk to you, and thank you for the EIB Institute, and I just shudder as an American to think what would be happening to this country. I mean it’s scary enough, but without you and talk radio and the Internet. Anyway, I for several days have just been furious —

RUSH: Can I answer that?

CALLER: What?

RUSH: May I answer your observation?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: We played the sound bites of the Toledo plumber. Do you realize without this New Media, what you would not know? I know you do because you just said so. Do you realize what you would not know? Obama would be headed for a landslide. If the media were doing its job, he’d be 30% in the polls right now. But do you know what you would not know if it were not for all this New Media? It’s frightening.

CALLER: Staggering. Staggering. But, Rush, the more I am informed, I feel as a responsible taxpayer as if what has been done through Barney Frank and Maxine Waters and Chris Dud and all of these liberal social agenda engineering with this housing mortgage meltdown, this crisis, I feel like the responsible American taxpayers have been gang raped by these people and that this bailout bill is like an involuntary hysterectomy being performed. It’s not the right solution, and it’s just further pain, and as a woman, you can imagine what I’m saying I feel like. But you can imagine and you can translate it as a male, and I won’t get vivid with that. But then I feel like —

RUSH: Oh, please, please do. Gotta be fair here. I mean you’ve talked about being gang raped and having forced hysterectomy. The men have to share your pain here. What are you talking about?

CALLER: Well, you know, you refer to testicles and things like that. So you can imagine. And I don’t have to get vivid on that —

RUSH: You don’t have to get vivid. You feel like the men probably think they’re getting neutered.

CALLER: Well, I’m sure, I’m sure.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: Exactly. And then if Obama is elected, I’m going to take this —

RUSH: By the way, we men think we’re getting screwed, too. You know, not just you. There’s a one-word solution for this. It’s called rent, and had that one-word solution be allowed to stand and apply, we wouldn’t have this mess. I understand how livid you are. I’m as livid as you are. This mess, this subprime mess, which is the foundation of all the other aspects of this, happened precisely because of liberal Democrat socialist engineering designed to get people into houses they couldn’t pay for, all for the express purpose of voting for Democrats and whacking capitalism.

CALLER: Exactly. And what you know another level of this may seem strange, but this whole ACORN thing, this is like infecting with an STD in the process of that gang rape. But, anyway, and then if Obama is elected, it will be like taking all the responsible people that have done what they’re supposed to and saying, okay, we’re taking you into the hospital and we’re taking one of your kidneys or we’re taking part of your liver because somebody else who has not been responsible or somebody who is unfortunate needs it, and you don’t have any choice in the matter but that’s what we’re going to do.

RUSH: Well, you know, that’s an interesting thought that you have. I must take a break at this time, Trisha. I’m glad you called.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, we just finished a conversation with Trisha in Trumbull, Connecticut, and she felt ‘gang raped’ by the Obama tax plan and the bailout. She feels like she had to have a ‘forced hysterectomy,’ and she said, ‘Look, Obama’s plan is no different than saying you gotta go to the hospital and donate a kidney to somebody who’s been irresponsible all their life, and needs a kidney or somebody take part of your liver or what have you.’ It got me to thinking. Isn’t it interesting, ladies and gentlemen, that Obama wants to take from the rich to give to the poor when it comes to money; when it comes to human life, Obama is willing to allow babies to be killed in order to get their mothers’ votes. Obama says that he is for helping those less fortunate in a monetary sense, but he is not for helping those who are truly powerless. Those babies intended to be aborted who survive? That’s the essence of helpless.

It’s also the essence of innocence. But their lives can be exchanged for votes for Obama. Obama says, ‘Well, the reason I support the infanticide bill…’ Although he doesn’t use the word, the reason he doesn’t is because the mother’s intention was to have the abortion. ‘I don’t want to saddle her,’ just like he said, ‘I wouldn’t want my kids to be saddled with a mistake.’ So to get votes from troubled pregnant women, Obama allows them to try to kill their babies. Supporting partial-birth abortion and infanticide is the ultimate act of bullying and cruelty to those less fortunate. There’s a constitutional lawyer by the name of Robert George. He’s a professor at Princeton. He’s very eloquent when it comes to pro-life. He wrote a piece called, ‘Obama’s Abortion Extremism — What kind of America do we want our beloved nation to be?

‘Barack Obama’s America is one in which being human just isn’t enough to warrant care and protection. It is an America where the unborn may legitimately be killed without legal restriction, even by the grisly practice of partial-birth abortion. It is an America where a baby who survives abortion is not even entitled to comfort care as she dies on a stainless steel table or in a soiled linen bin. It is a nation in which some members of the human family are regarded as inferior and others superior in fundamental dignity and rights. In Obama’s America, public policy would make a mockery of the great constitutional principle of the equal protection of the law. In perhaps the most telling comment made by any candidate in either party in this election year, Senator Obama, when asked by Rick Warren when a baby gets human rights, replied: ‘that question is above my pay grade.”

When does a baby get human rights? It’s above his pay grade.

By the way, folks, all of this fundraising stuff, ACORN and all that, it’s not just about that. There’s a lot more to worry about with an Obama presidency.